Disney Guy Review - The Black Cauldron

hey there everybody I'm just Disney guy and welcome to another Disney guy review today we're going to be taking a look at what a Dizzy's most ambitious but ultimately one of the most disastrous animated films the Black Cauldron Disney was still in the midst of its massive transition in the post-war era and in the early 70s with their animation team getting older and looking for an overhaul the studio was in search of a film that would not only be successful but can also mark the beginning of a new age of Disney animation enter The Chronicles of / Dane by Lloyd Alexander a popular 5 novel series based on Welsh mythology that was written in the mid-60s Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas two of Disney's remaining nine old men pleaded with the studio to turn the Chronicles of per Dane into an animated movie claiming that if done correctly the film had the potential to be this generation Snow White with this in mind the studio optioned the novels in 1971 and after acquiring the rights began pre-production in 1973 alright let's pause for a second and adjust the first major issue of the stone-faced looking a little Frankie nollie and all but anytime you start throwing around the name snow white before pencils even hit the paper you're setting some pretty lofty and realistically unobtainable expectations the studio also in need of attracting young talented animators use the prospect of this potentially generation-defining animated film now being called the Black Cauldron as a means to excite and recruit new talent to the studio however almost immediately the film is bogged down by production troubles partially due to the influx of inexperienced animators design artist Mel Shaw Kamath early concept art for the film but studio head Ron Miller a demon to be too complicated for the current staff the young animators also struggle with creating realistic human characters and with all that in mind in August of 1978 the film's 1980 release date was pushed all the way to 1984 all right second major issue here back in the 30s when Walt went ahead with the ambitious in the white project his animators had been the studio for a few years working on things like Silly Symphonies experimenting and learning the skills they would need to pull off this massive snow white project here Disney was trying to do something on the same scale but in a far more competitive landscape for animation and primarily with kids who were fresh out of college I promise I'm not going to do this for the whole review but once again unrealistic expectations various attempts were made to breathe life back into the Black Cauldron what storyboard artist Vance Gehry tasked with simplifying the script then even famed screenwriter rosemary and Sisson was hired to give the script to British voice relative newcomer John Clements was given the role of director but faced early criticism when it seems were deemed to be too comedic art Stevens Richard rich Timberman and Dave missioner fresh off Fox and Hound joined his animation directors for the project but this cost further risks among the staff over the direction of the film rod Miller didn't like how clustered everything was becoming so he brought in veteran layout artist Joe Hale to be the film's producer finally with all the staff in place production the Black Cauldron began in earnest in 1980 immediately upon production Joe Hale and his team began to try and sort out and simplify the story and direction of the Black Cauldron they focused in on two of the five novels of The Chronicles of pertained identifying the elements that they believed would make for the most concise story and with that in mind begin to pinpoint and refine their main characters early concept our fellow lead characters was submitted by Tim Burton but Hale instead elected to coax nine old men veteran Milt call out of retirement to handle the character designs for the project what's interesting about this decision is that all the hard to argue with on paper it definitely prevented the film from having its own unique look and feel yes burns drawings as expected are a little out there but at least they were different as I'd like hundred-day house points out no call himself identified as a refiner not a concept artist so in tasked a cop with character designs about any new inspiration to go off of melts sort of relied on making amalgamations of former characters that he's worked on Terran for example is Peter Pan meets Mowgli and alone we almost intentionally is Princess Aurora all over again and speaking of Sleeping Beauty hand decided that the darker gothic look of that film wouldn't be the template for the Black Cauldron and even made the decision for the Black Cauldron to be Disney's first animated film to be shot on 70 millimeter wide screen since Sleeping Beauty major changes were made to the villain and story as well in Vance Gary's reimagining of the Black Cauldron he made the villainous Horned King into a large hot-tempered Viking but he'll instead elected to give the Horned King qualities of a number of villains in the book series elevating his status to the story's main villain and giving him a much darker and more mysterious design and in matching this new design the story itself began to get darker as it continued to be reworked by Hale and his writing team now that everyone was on board with these changes though which saw the departures of rosemary and Sisson John Musker and Ron Clements from the project all citing creative differences there's some context that needs to be explained with this darkening of the story usually Disney's all for light is fair but we have to remember the time period and what was going on around it you see Disney had lost its stranglehold on family entertainment to the likes of Star Wars and Indiana Jones and then the animation space you know that the executives at Disney were keeping a close eye on a little film called the secret of NIMH which was being worked on by Don Bluth team demographics were pretty much aside in the market and to them dark was in your typical Disney comedy was out despite leaning on Sleeping Beauty as a visual guideline major technological steps in animation weren't taken throughout the creation of the Black Cauldron initially there were plans for the Black Cauldron to be the first animated film to feature holographic imagery but the idea that one of the konjam born would hover over the audience despite positive tests though the decision was made to ax the idea when it became apparent that most theaters wouldn't be able to handle the cost associated with having a 3d projector one technological advancement that didn't fall by the wayside however was the animation photo transfer process or apt process developed by David W Spencer all right real quickly here's the basics of the apt process the npt process was supposed to replace the auger fee is the fastest and easiest way to transfer drawings of the cells in fall color although it didn't exactly replace the ography computers did a pretty good job of that on their own it was still quite the technological breakthrough and certainly worthy of its technical Academy Award the Black Cauldron was also on the forefront of computer-generated imagery upon hearing about cgi being used for Disney's other animated film in the pipeline the Great Mouse Detective Jo hell was excited about the process and asked for CGI to be used in their own movie in the end CGI was used created alone Wiis ball ball and the titular cauldron making the Black Cauldron the first animated film to be released using CGI so again let the record show that the Great Mouse Detective was actually the first Disney animated film to use CGI Black Cauldron just happened to be released first also pretty cool is that the animators used live-action footage of dry ice to create the smoke that was coming out of the cauldron itself that's sort of blending of live-action and CGI for it really something that we see anymore considering how good CGI is these days voice acting what a different direction than usual for Disney Animation has none of the typical mainstays made an appearance in the Black Cauldron instead a group of actors mostly from the world of British television was assembled to voice to main cast with Grant Bradley is Taryn susan Sheridan as a lonely and Nigel Hawthorne is flirt a phlegm the music was also handled by Disney outsider when the score composed and conducted by acclaimed film composer Elmer Bernstein honestly I'm all for new voices in the world of Disney so that being said there was quite the departure in star power at least for an American audience perspective when he consider that Mickey Rooney and Kurt Russell or Disney's last flick that's what a score well can argue with results Bernstein's work on the Black Cauldron to this day is still critically acclaimed but all throughout production the Black Cauldron continued to be cursed by numerous setbacks early on the animation process it was discovered that the animators were using the wrong dimensions of cells for the 70 millimeter frames causing weeks of work to have to be redone then in 1982 as a way to try and keep animated jobs from being outsourced overseas the animators guild wound strength setting back production another 10 weeks but the biggest upheaval to the black cartoons production came due to a major shift at the top of the Disney Company in September of 1984 rod Miller who had been a staunch defender of the black collagen from its inception resigned from a CEO position and former president of Paramount Pictures Michael I was brought in to replace him soon after Eisner appointed former Paramount executive Jeffrey Katzenberg to take charge of Disney's motion pictures again there's a ton to unpack here about the shift at the top of Disney that I promise we'll get to in the near future but for now here's the basics of what you need to know despite their successful movie careers Eisner and Katzenberg were not animation guys which definitely posed a problem especially if you were part of an animation team that was currently working on a beleaguered and pretty expense animated film soon after the power change at the top the Black Cauldron was ready for a test screening which was held in Burbank California unfortunately Disney's first animated PG film wasn't well received culminating in terrified children and upset parents leaving the theatre upon the uncharacteristically scary cauldron board scene upon seeing this reaction Katzenberg immediately ordered that the film be edited both to make it less scary and bring down the runtime Hale objected to the order explaining that animated films couldn't just be edited like live-action films Katzenberg frustrated with Hales explanation decided to take the film to an edit Bay himself instead of the cut parts out of the movie before Eisner called and convinced him to stop in the end the movie was delayed 7 months to July of 1985 and all told 12 minutes would eventually be cut from the movie so let's talk about this little dispute for a second was he all right that you can't edit an animated film well no even Snow White very famously had some entire scenes taken out of it so what was the reason for his explanation well inhales defense it is highly unusual to edit a film that's already been fully animated why is that well animating scenes cost a lot of money and takes a lot of time so when you start taking those scenes out or even worse if you have to start animating them it's pretty cost and efficient so why most edits on animated films especially during that time we're made during the like a real stage which are basically moving storyboards you can get a sense for how the movie is flowing that way if you have to make edits you can make it the storyboards not two fully animated scenes but finally after numerous delays in over four and a half years of development the Black Cauldron hit theaters on July 24th 1985 so when they first started working on the Black Cauldron people the Disney studio truly believed that it would be their next Snow White so was it well to put it mildly no the my cauldron is nowhere near the generational importance of Snow White at least in a positive sense but let's start with what I did like about the film the look and feel of the film is definitely darker than any Disney film prior aside from maybe the Night on Bald Mountain scene in Fantasia and considering they were going for a dark feel that's definately commendable and the high part of the film is absolutely the visual effects from something as simple as the ball ball to the incredible College of Bourne sequence the effects the animators used aren't pretty stunning and look unique from anything we've seen in a Disney movie before and also maybe it's just residual feelings I have from Sleeping Beauty but something about the film being in widescreen just makes it feel more epic so bonus points for that but here's the issue once you get past the look and feel of the film there's really not a lot here although the animation can be unique at times nothing really sets the characters or a story of Black Cauldron apart from other animated films that we've seen the characters are surprisingly cookie-cutter and by the end of the movie I found myself asking what it was that even knew about these characters all we know well Prince is a long wait for example is that she's pretty I only know that because it's said by multiple characters throughout the movie even the Horned King who was one of the cooler and more unique-looking villains in Disney history really leaves no lasting impact which is a shame considering the potential that this Dylan had I think would annoys me even more though is that the character arc of gurgi a clearly secondary character far outpaces the character arc of Turin our main character from beginning to end turn starts as a headstrong teenager who wants to become a great warrior and ends by giving up his magical sword for his friend noting that we haven't seen before but at least you can say that it was some lengthy heroic act that we didn't see in the character earlier meanwhile gurgi starts as this selfish con artist only looks out for himself and ends by sacrificing his life to save his new friends I mean come on guys when I was younger I wasn't the biggest fan of Goerke I actually found me quite annoying but now look back at it giri's the real hero of this story I mean he sure beats the hat got a princess a long way who does what does she do in this movie exactly but where I think this film really falls down isn't its story which again is a shame because of the rich source material was based off of like I said before there's not a lot of knew that this movie story brings to the genre but even worse than that is the amount of hanging plot devices and just unexplained elements throughout the film I've argued in the past on this channel about wanting more explanation from films but this one is definitely the worst offender of the ones I've come across so far I mean right off the bat we see that the Horned King is in power but how and if he's in power then what's the story with princess at longways parents is she even really a princess I mean the Horned King called her a scardy maid but was that just an insult dirt is that true and oh yeah if the Horned King is already empowered then wasn't even want with the collagen anyway Louis maybe I misinterpreted the Horned King being in power but there's certainly no mention of other rulers in the kingdom so he must be in power no literally I just asked six questions that never get answered or explained in the slightest all in the first 20 or so minutes of the movie I mean if that's not indicative of your story having a few holes in it then I don't know what is and in addition to the abundance of plot holes there's other elements introduced out the story that could be interesting but I never really follow through on for example a laundry has a measurable bubble that we not only never learned the origins of but it also never even factors into the story aside from helping to like the dungeon and then there's the fair folk who again get introduced to the story but are only in the film for around five minutes and really only served to get the characters from point A to point B something they could have done without introducing an entire new group of characters and yes I understand in the fair folk who are the primary victims of the 12 minutes that were cut out of the film but if you're gonna cut out almost all of their scenes and purpose in the movie then why did it just go all the way and cut them from the film entirely and of course the Black Cauldron features one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to story and that's poor pacing almost everything in this movie moves too fast from the relationship between the characters to the actual story beats themselves one of the biggest pacing missteps in my opinion is revealing the Horned King within the first 20 minutes instead of allowing for his mystique to grow throughout the film much like what Disney did with Shere Khan in the Jungle Book we get to meet the Horn King so early that it sort of kills any fear and mystery of the character could hold especially because it's not like he does anything particularly dastardly in their initial meeting to convey to the audience that he's this ruthless character who they should be afraid of I also thought that the climax of the movie came upon us real quickly but it's more than everything else in the film feels like it's moving too fast it only makes sense for the climax too as well so in the end we're left with the film that though visually impressive has just too many issues with its story and characters to look past it's weird because it feels like Disney was trying to make a non Disney movie and maybe that's a side effect of a team of new animators trying to make their mark on Disney history but what instead created was ensuring that the Black Cauldron would go down as the black sheep of Disney Animation upon its release the Black Cauldron already had its back against the wall due to its inflated budget the movie was budgeted for 25 million dollars but ran its cost up to 44 million dollars before production was over making it the most expensive animated film ever made at the time of release just for comparison's sake the Black Cauldron costs 44 million dollars to make while the rescuers released only 8 years earlier cost 7.5 million dollars so yeah pretty expensive movie unfortunately initial reviews didn't help black colleges cause as despite the praise reviewers had for the film's visuals reviews were generally poor saying that the Black Cauldron was ambitious but disappointing the box office numbers compounded the issue as Black Cauldron scraped together a meager four million dollars in its opening weekend good for 4th at the box office and made only 21 point three million dollars in its and release this massive loss through the future of Disney's animation Department into doubt and enforce the studio to rethink how they made animated features there is no getting around what a financial disaster this film was I mean for crying out loud the Care Bears movie out through it but if there is one benefit if you could call it that too the situation is that this embarrassing turn of events did pretty much force the Disney studio to hit the reset button and it helps a stage for the Renaissance to come aside from being the first Disney animated film to receive its own full-length video game a Sierra online developed computer game due to the film's financial failures Disney hasn't exactly featured the Black Cauldron much outside of its initial release Black Cauldron was never released in the theaters and it took until 1997 for the film to even receive a home video release in the UK with the u.s. not getting a VHS release until 1998 there's also been scarce Black Cauldron presence in the parks with the Horned King making this small parents in Cinderella's castle mystery tour in Tokyo Disneyland and Gerdes munchies and crunchies counter service restaurant existing in Walt Disney World's Fantasyland from 1986 through 1993 so despite its grand expectations of being the next generation Snow White Black Cauldron will instead be remembered for the bottoming out of Disney Animation but in a weird way the failure of the Black Cauldron proved to be a necessary speedbump and disney's road back to animated supremacy well guys a rough start for me this week hope you all enjoyed and your thoughts are about the Black Cauldron also be sure to subscribe to the channel follow me on Twitter and if you feel like supporting this channel even more check out my patreon page where you can see your name the end credits get reviews a day early and even more goodies also be sure to check out my last video check out this thing I review playlists and any other sort of videos that youtube has popping up around me and I'll see you all real soon [Music]

Channel: Joe The Disney Guy

Views: 22,297

Rating: 4.8507462 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: D4voRNr1Ae0

Length: 21min 7sec (1267 seconds)

Published: Sat May 05 2018